The Pensioner of Azkaban
by TeamVampire
Summary: AU, AM. Magic is purely fantasy - the stuff of children's stories. Not to Sirius, though, as he tries to escape the Dementor-run retirement home of Azkaban in order to avenge his friends Lily and James, who aren't quite as deceased as he thinks.


**I posted a much shorter version of this a few months ago, but took it down due to lack of reviews. (Thank you, though, yellow14.) I've now realized I don't care. Enjoy.**

**This all began when I accidentally wrote Pensioner instead of Prisoner. Azkaban is an old age home and Sirius Black tries to escape. Hopefully, it will turn out to be hilarious.**

**Disclaimer: I almost wish I could say I don't own this storyline. My mind works in weird ways... it's somewhat embarrassing. However, I don't own the characters or most of the ideas.**

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The Pensioner of Azkaban

Chapter 1

Sirius was silently seething in his room. He hated Azkaban. The nurses, or "Dementors" as they were commonly called among the more rebellious patients, sucked the fun out of everything. His room was right across the hall from his cousin Bellatrix's and that only made his stay worse.

_Stupid Bellatrix, _he thought to himself. _Stealing my pudding cup..._

He was brought out his mental rant by one of the Dementors dropping a newspaper through his door's mail slot.

"Eh? What's this?" he said, forgetting that he received the newspaper every day. His dementia was, in many ways, a drawback. He scanned the front page. Upon seeing the picture of the Weasley family and their rat, Scabbers, he proceeded to yell many curses and obscenities. "Pettigrew, you traitor! I'll kill you some day!"

He now read the article more thoroughly. He would have to find these Weasleys, only then could he kill the man who betrayed his friends and was now posing as a rat. A Dementor who had heard his shouting knocked on his door, interrupting his plotting.

"Mr Black? Are you okay?" Sirius rolled his eyes at their sickening concern, but answered promptly.

"Fine, there was just... er, a spider," he replied, patting himself on the back for his moment of genius.

"All right, call me if you need any help." The Dementor stopped speaking and Sirius could hear its footsteps retreating. Now he could work on his plan to do what no one had ever done before: break out of Azkaban.

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Sirius had overcome the crippling pain from his arthritis and hobbled down the hall to the Azkaban library. If ever there was a time for library visits, this was it. He needed to come up with a plan of escape. And possibly a plan B in case the first didn't come to fruition.

He tapped his slippered foot against the coffee table it was resting on, while leaning back in a worn armchair located a fair distance from all the others. Sirius was naturally antisocial, except with a select few other retirees. Remus Lupin was one. So was James Potter, though Sirius had recently taken to believing he was dead at the hand of "Peter Pettigrew", despite the fact that neither James nor Remus had any idea who that was. They made up one of the extremely rare gangs in Azkaban: the Marauders. Sirius's arch nemesis was Severus Snape, the leader of a rival gang known as the Knitters. Secretly, Sirius envied their knitting abilities, but covered it up with some good, old-fashioned, undeserved resentment.

Still tapping away, Sirius glanced out a nearby window. If only there was some way to get over the fence. The impenetrable, foolproof, three foot fence.

_Hm... _thought Sirius, rubbing his stubbly chin. _It's sure to be electrified, stupid Muggles. Perhaps I could -_

"Eureka! I have it!" He stood up quickly, knocking his chair backwards. Glancing around at the library's occupants, who were mostly staring at him or asking those nearest to repeat his words, he lowered his voice in one of his frequent bouts of paranoia. Also, judging by his demonstration of the first sign, insanity. "Azkaban is going to have a mysterious power failure..."

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After explaining his scheme to an enthusiastic, if slightly deaf, Remus (and James, though Sirius pretended he wasn't there and screamed loudly if he tried to speak), Sirius decided they should put it into action that very night. It was, after all, the monthly games evening. When the lights went off, everyone would be left in the dark and undoubtedly submit to total and complete confusion. Sirius would use that time to make his brilliantly planned escape. Then it was only a matter of finding Pettigrew. At last, James would be avenged.

The plan was simple, but ingenious, or at least it was in Sirius's mind. He and the apparently deceased James would attend the activity, acting as if everything was normal, while Remus would sneak into the janitorial room and sabotage the fuse box. As soon as the power was out, Sirius would escape through the nearest doorway, navigate the maze of hallways and scale the fence, thus regaining his freedom.

Sirius and James, who was being ignored by his best friend, as per usual, entered the recreation hall feeling as confident as they normally did before taking part in some sort of caper, which happened with surprising frequency. They tried to blend into the crowd, suspecting their infamy would result in failure, but found that no one so much as turned to glance at them. Having been expecting some kind of commotion, they actually felt rather disappointed, a feeling which only escalated as they were hailed by a nearby woman.

"James! I didn't expect to see you here tonight," gushed Lily Evans, a rather pretty woman from room 3B, and James's ex-wife. Her hair was dyed red, which – she claimed – was in fact the exact same hair colour she had possessed in her youth, though many were sceptical as to whether it had been _quite_ so vibrant. Eye burningly vibrant.

Lily continued speaking as though there had not been a long sentence of narration about her hair. "Don't you usually avoid these things? Why, the last time I saw you at a games night was when you did that silly pudding thing with the air conditioning system!"

"The Great Pudding Downpour of '98," said James loudly, trying to be heard over Sirius's screaming, which had started up when Lily began speaking.

"You and your childish pranks!" Lily exclaimed, shaking her head disapprovingly. "Honestly, you need to grow up."

"They're not childish pranks! They're genius schemes!" objected James.

Sirius now had a thoroughly sore throat, so he decided that he would blend in somewhere his screaming would not be necessary. He spotted a game of Qudditch and went to join in. Borrowing James's Firebolt along the way, of course. James had no use for it now, reasoned Sirius with a mournful sniff.

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Minerva McGonagall was confused and annoyed. She felt like a writer who couldn't come up with a good simile. But this was not without an excuse, for no writer should be unable to come up with an adequate and somewhat irrelevant simile. It would be like Mozart being unable to write a symphony.

The chair ridden patients' handicap meant that many of the evening's games were not available to them, but one thing they could do was toss a ball to each other, which was exactly what they had been doing. Mr Weasley was just in the process of throwing the ball across the foot of distance between himself and McGonagall when they heard someone shout, "Go, Firebolt! Do it for James!"

Their heads turned just in time to see Mr Potter's coveted electric wheelchair coming at them at a speed that no hand-powered chair could ever hope to achieve. It was being driven by none other than Sirius Black, the home's well known eccentric recluse.

There was no time to do anything more than gasp as Sirius intercepted the pass, slamming into McGonagall as he did so. She promptly tumbled out of her chair and lay on the ground, glaring at Sirius in confusion and annoyance, and thus bringing the story full circle.

"Black!" spluttered McGonagall.

Sirius cowered in fear of her wrath. He was not generally a fearful man, but McGonagall was infamous for her figuratively sharp tongue. It was rumoured that her tongue was also literally sharp, but no one had ever been quite idiotic enough to ask her about it.

McGonagall got to her feet with much more vigour than a woman her age should have been able to manage, unless they were enraged to the point of violence. Sirius recognized this, feeling that it probably didn't bode well for him.

"What," she began with deceiving calm, "do you think you are doing?"

Sirius shuffled his feet, trying to avoid her eyes. She always made him feel like a student getting into trouble. _Ah, déjà vu._

Glancing up to see she hadn't left during his extremely short internal monologue that consisted of three words, he panicked. What to say? The truth, that always got him out of trouble. "Well, I noticed the redhead was trying to pass you the Quaffle and I know for a fact that you couldn't catch a gnome if it bit you on the backside and hung around to dance a jig, so I took it off your hands."

McGonagall narrowed her eyes. Oh, wait, it was _lying_ that always got him out of trouble. He'd have to remember that in future.

Just as she was about to open her mouth for what was undoubtedly the lecture of a lifetime, McGonagall was interrupted by one of the Dementors calling for attention.

"Can everyone look over here, please!" ordered a particularly evil looking Dementor situated at the front of the room. She waited until everyone's eyes were on her before continuing. "We have a very special guest tonight. He's come a long way to be here, so I expect you all to give him your undivided attention and respect." She eyed Sirius suspiciously for a moment, then motioned for someone to join her up front. "Please welcome Mr Tom Riddle and his Carpet Python, Nagini."

The Dementor started clapping and backing off while a tall, oddly reptilian man with an extremely large snake wrapped around his shoulders stepped forward.

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**Edited 6th of December, 2009.**

**Formatting fixed 8th of December, 2012.**

**-TeamVampire**


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